


Auld Lang Syne

by derevko (sunshine_queen)



Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-28
Updated: 2017-06-28
Packaged: 2018-11-20 00:33:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11324958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshine_queen/pseuds/derevko
Summary: After Charlie sings 'Auld Lang Syne,' Steve has to explain it to Diana.





	Auld Lang Syne

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to [Typey](typeytypeytypey.tumblr.com) for taking my cloud of feelings and whipping them into some kind of recognizable shape!

“I didn’t realize you spoke Scots,” Diana says, latching onto one thought of the many keeping her awake. The lamp on the wall gives off only enough light for her to make out her hand resting on Steve’s chest. She could fall asleep easily, lulled by the rhythm of his breaths and his heartbeat.

“That’s not English,” he murmurs. One hand is on her elbow, the other on her back, and he’s rubbing slow circles between her shoulder blades, as if he’s gentling a horse. She feels him nearly slip away from her and into slumber, as men were criticized as doing too often in Clio’s eighth volume.

“I didn’t realize you spoke Scots,” she repeats in English.

“That’s because I don’t,” he says, sounding more awake. “Why would you think that I did?”

“That song that Charlie played downstairs. The one he played when you said it was time to sleep.”

The hand on her back hesitates, then resumes. “Auld Lang Syne,” he says. “You’re right, part of it is in Scots. It’s a well-known song.”

“It was pretty, but it made you all sad. Why?”

He lifts his hand to nudge at her chin, and she props herself up to look at him. His eyes look darker in the dim light, but no less beautiful, and she can’t help but smile.

“It didn’t make us sad,” he says, touching her jaw carefully, reverently.

“It did. You and Chief and Sammy, you all got quiet and looked away.”

Sometimes Steve finds it difficult to explain things to her satisfaction, Diana has noticed. It isn’t that he doesn’t want to explain it, or that he doesn’t want her to understand, but getting the context right can require more explanation than Steve is used to giving. But he tries, and Diana is grateful. “It’s a song that is played at the end of things,” he says finally, stroking her cheek. “If you go to a party for the New Year, the band plays it, or everyone sings it together.”

“The New Year?”

His mouth quirks into a smile. “We’re in the month of November. There’s about three more weeks, and then it’s December, which is the last month of the year. Then the new year starts with January…” He taps a finger as he names each. “Twelve months. On the last night of December, people have parties to send off the old year and ring in the new.”

She frowns. “Why isn’t it joyful, then? It’s a new year, and they’re celebrating.”

“Because sometimes ‘new’ doesn’t mean better,” he says in a heavy exhale. “Or…it’s hard to leave things behind. Sometimes people think about the things that happened to them in that year, and it makes them sad, or they’re sorry to be moving on.”

“So it is sad.” But even as she says it, she realizes it isn’t true—at least, not entirely. Her own life is completely new, though not better or worse. Thinking of her mother standing on the shore makes her heart pang, just as thinking of ending Ares’s reign over man sends a thrill through her.

“The song itself isn’t—it’s just poignant,” Steve says, seeing what is in her heart. “Sometimes people are really happy and the song just…makes them feel a lot of things.”

That explanation she can understand, and she nods.

“The gatherings are usually fun, though. You’ll see next month.”

“In December.”

“Yes, at the end of December.”

“When the war is over.”

He tucks her hair behind her ear and smiles. “When the war is over,” he echoes. “And we go to a New Year’s Eve party.”

“I’m ready, now. I can dance.”

“That you can,” he agrees, “You need to have dancing at a party.”

He stifles a yawn, and Diana remembers the rest of her confusion. “Why did Charlie play that song tonight, if it’s only November?”

There is a flicker in his eye before he says, too smoothly, “Last song of the night, I guess. Something for you to think on.”

“Don’t lie to me, Steve,” she says. He isn’t lying to be cruel, she knows. He’s lying to be gentle, but she’s had enough of that.

“He played it because tomorrow might be tough,” he says. He looks at her nose, and her mouth, but not her eyes. “Tomorrow…”

When he looks at her, she sees him fretting over what might happen tomorrow. He needs to wake with the dawn to find a uniform. He needs to lead his team into enemy territory. He needs to end the war, he needs to save lives, and he feels the weight of it.

Tomorrow, Diana knows, she will find Ares. Tomorrow, she will stop Ares, and then the war of man will end. There will peace again, and the lines on Steve’s forehead will smooth. Tomorrow, fresh from their victory, she will take Steve to bed, and she will tease him over tonight’s worries. Tomorrow, the war will be auld lang syne, old times.

She kisses him, and feels his worry melt away. Tomorrow hasn’t arrived; there’s time yet.

**Author's Note:**

> To the best of my research, the song Auld Lang Syne has been sung forever in Scotland, and at least since the 1860s in America, familiar enough to be used in other songs as early as 1906. Likewise, the phrase ‘ring in the new year’ came from the poem by Tennyson and has been used since around the 1850s.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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